Lessons from General Mike Jackson on strengthening European security

European and NATO allies are scrambling to work out how they can defend themselves when the US is not reliably on their side.

PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo 2D347K8

The memorial service of General Sir Mike Jackson, who died in October 2024, took place at Sandhurst this week. In his tribute, his elder son Mark, also a former officer in the Parachute Regiment, recalled one of his last conversations with his father. As they surveyed the global unrest chronicled on a newspaper front page, from the Middle East to Ukraine and beyond, the former head of the British Army remarked: “Perhaps all we do is buy time”.

Jackson certainly did more than mark time in his forty-four-year military career; he played a key role in engagements in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. As a result of this strong record of service, he became Chief of the General Staff, the number two job in the UK armed forces. His obituary in The Times ended with this: “He was the highest-profile CGS since Montgomery, and one of the last of the big beasts.”

Anyone who knew General Jackson, including media interviewers, soon found out that he was both highly intelligent and plain speaking, to the point of bluntness. His words about what the successful use of force can and cannot achieve deserve consideration. Time has certainly elapsed between the late 1990s and his celebrated command of KFOR, the NATO Force in Kosovo, and the planning underway today for a “coalition of the willing” to protect peace in Ukraine. Yet both operations could be traced back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wounded Russia left in its wake.

As former communist Yugoslavia fragmented into different states, the majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo increasingly resented being ruled by Serbia. Amid clashes between the Kosovan Liberation Army and Serbian forces, NATO began a “strategic” bombing of Serbian forces. Then the United Nations passed a resolution to deploy a force “to secure and enforce the withdrawal of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia forces from Kosovo”. Consequently, General Jackson was made commander of KFOR.

Jackson’s greatest moment came in March 1999, when he refused to obey an instruction from NATO’s supreme allied commander, telling the American Wesley Clark, “Sir, I am not going to start World War Three for you”. Clark wanted Jackson to deploy forces to stop the Russians from landing at Pristina Airport – even though they were then led by Boris Yeltsin and technically supporters of KFOR’s efforts.

Clark out-ranked him as a four-star general, but Jackson pointed out correctly that he was in operational command and that he believed the order was outside KFOR’s mandate. Instead, Jackson, who was a Russian speaker, flew to Pristina himself and established personal relations with the Russian General Viktor Zavarzin, offering his hip flask and to man a security cordon around the airport “commanded by my own son”, Mark.

Today, 26 years on, many of the same nations are involved with Ukraine but the dynamics between them are totally different. Putin replaced Yeltsin in August 1999 and has since abandoned any pretence of working with western European countries, whom he now regards as ideological enemies. Russia no longer merely menaces those near-neighbours it regards as being in its back yard – it has invaded Georgia and Ukraine.

Far from being worried about Russian adventurism, the United States under Donald Trump has cosied up to the Russian territorial aggressor and turned away from its NATO allies. The President has declared his intention to annex territory from two of them, Canada and Denmark. He is so far refusing to commit to providing backstop intelligence and air support to any peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

Trump has already declared that Ukraine must surrender territory. Meanwhile, speaking of the US president and Putin, Tulsi Gabbard, America’s Director of National Intelligence, declared: “we have two leaders of two great countries who are very good friends and very focussed on how we can strengthen the shared objectives and shared interests.”

Instead of holding America back from impetuous actions, as Mike Jackson did, European and NATO allies are scrambling to work out how they can defend themselves when the US is not reliably on their side, with a President who even seems to be flirting with the other side. Sir Keir Starmer and President Macron keep on stating that the US is a vital ally – as it has been historically – but for how much longer? Britain and France are left trying to set up a “coalition of the willing” without the US to try to defend Ukraine’s independence should Trump force “a deal” on President Zelensky.

IFOR in Bosnia and KFOR in Kosovo were allied actions built around the NATO alliance in which the US was a vital partner. So was the deployment in Afghanistan in support of the US after the 9/11 attacks in 2001. The operation against Iraq was led by the US, and divided EU and NATO members. It was carried out by a “coalition of the willing” in which the UK played a prominent part. No similar military action pivoting around Trump’s America could be contemplated today.

With hindsight, these campaigns did buy time and kept potential enemies of Western democracy at bay. But most European leaders would admit that the peace dividend was squandered. Almost all NATO members, including the US, reduced their defence spending to finance domestic schemes and tax cuts. As CDS, Jackson implemented a controversial rationalisation of the UK’s infantry that led to the merger and abolition of historic regiments. Government spending plans had left little alternative.

Military forces are “hard power”. Taxpayers fund them for protection. In the years of Jackson’s military service most of us lived in peace and security. But perhaps that was the anomaly, perhaps the natural state of nations is to fight each other. If so, it may be that we have not made the best use of the time that was bought for us.